Knowing exactly how many nutrients the seabirds suck can help scientists predict what might happen in the environment if birds die. In addition, there is an important water body of nutrients in the estrus. Too little, and the species that rely on these food sources may be in trouble. Too many, you can get dangerous, at least unpleasant algal blooms, suck oxygen out of the water and kill the fish. So it’s important to know where nitrogen and phosphorus come from – and some of it must come from seabirds.

“It’s really fascinating,” said Scott Winton, an aquatic chemist at the federal institute of technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Winton did not participate in the study, but instead studied how seagulls spread nutrients from landfills to nearby waters. “I love stories like this.”

Often we hear about nitrogen and phosphorus loss, because agricultural or human waste can cause too much water to seep into the water, leading to death zones like the gulf of Mexico. But it is also important to know about other sources of nitrogen and phosphorus, such as seabirds, extracting food from the ocean, digesting it, and transporting it back to land. The nitrogen and phosphorus in the stool can seep into soil, underground reservoirs, rivers and lakes, and oceans.

Still, every source of nutrition is important to understand the delicate balance of keeping the ecosystem healthy. This is particularly important when scientists are trying to understand how climate change will affect water quality in the future. They now get millions to millions of pounds of nutrients from bird droppings and add them to the model.